Region | Near East | American Journal of Archaeology

AlUla: Wonder of Arabia at the Palace Museum, Beijing: Bridging Global Cultural and Archaeological Engagement Between China and the Arab World

website — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:12:37 +0000

The exhibition AlUla: Wonder of Arabia at the Palace Museum in Beijing showcased the civilizations of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly present-day Saudi Arabia, from prehistory to the modern era, through archaeological artifacts unearthed in recent years. In addition to these artifacts, the exhibition incorporated rich audiovisual elements, offering visitors an immersive experience that allowed them to explore the millennia-old livelihoods and civilizations that thrived in the Arabian oases. This review focuses on three main aspects: first, the archaeological significance of the Maritime Silk Road as a broader context for the exhibition; second, an overview of the exhibition itself; and third, a critical review of the exhibition within the context of the Palace Museum’s global vision. Exhibitions like AlUla: Wonder of Arabia, created in collaboration with foreign institutions and scholars, reflect the Palace Museum’s ongoing commitment to cross-cultural exchange and international engagement and thus are intertwined with programs of cultural diplomacy.

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Marble Distribution Patterns in the Early Byzantine Southwestern Levant: Quantitative and Spatial Approaches

website — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:27:15 +0000

This study applies a quantitative and spatial approach to Early Byzantine marble finds from the southwestern Levant, integrating data into a theoretical model of overland transport costs. While the largest proportion of marble finds is concentrated along the Mediterranean coast near seaports, where transport costs were lower, the most significant variation in different categories of finds occurs farther inland. This unexpected variation suggests that factors beyond transport costs, such as the cultural and religious significance of sites, also influenced the distribution of marble objects. Sites with religious importance, for example, appear to have played a key role in this pattern, highlighting the complex interplay between economic and cultural forces in the Early Byzantine period. This study is the first comprehensive quantitative and spatial analysis of marble finds from the Early Byzantine period, the results of which show the patterns of distribution of imported marbles and reveal factors impacting this trade.

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Aššur’s Newcomers: Evidence for the Maintenance of Population in Imperial Assyrian Capitals Through Resettlement Events

website — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:27:15 +0000

Assyrian urban centers in northern Mesopotamia experienced massive growth during the Neo-Assyrian period (950–612 BCE) of the Iron Age. Aššur was the original seat of the Assyrian empire, acting as the center of Assyria’s religion and culture even after the capital was shifted elsewhere in the ninth century BCE. During the height of the empire in the eighth and seventh centuries, the occupied area of Aššur expanded to almost double that of the preceding centuries. Historically, it is known that deported populations from across the empire were resettled in the Assyrian heartland, with Aššur being one of the most common destinations. That many of the newcomers to Aššur were foreign-born is indicated in the evidence from archival records of several houses in the Outer Town. Furthermore, nonlocal mortuary practices are present in these newly occupied areas more so than anywhere else in the city. I propose that the significant increase in urban density at Aššur—and the subsequent expansion and restructuring of its urban area—resulted from the purposeful resettlement strategies of the Assyrian kings in the first millennium BCE. Such sudden, enforced population increases radically changed the urban fabric of all central Assyrian urban centers, not just Aššur.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains a photograph of human remains.

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Ancient Diet and Agricultural Economy in the Levant: An Archaeobotanical Study

website — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 15:22:09 +0000

This study utilizes archaeobotanical macroremains to explore the impact of integration into the Roman empire on foodways and agriculture in the Levant. Published and unpublished data from 65 sites dating from 1000 BCE to 500 CE are subjected to meta-analysis in order to shed light on patterns according to chronological and social variations. Additional archaeological evidence and literary comparisons are integrated throughout. Results reveal the unique character of consumption patterns in the region. The data reflect a variety of phenomena, including agricultural expansion, shifts in crop choices and cultural preferences, dietary regionalism, and the use of agricultural by-products and alternative fuel sources. Findings ultimately shift the narrative from Roman impact on provincial consumption patterns to instead highlight the importance and influence of local food practices. In bringing the eastern provinces into greater focus, the need for a nuanced approach to ancient foodways is emphasized.

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Asserting Control Through Water in the Roman Period: The Evidence from Southern Jordan and the Case of Khirbet al-Khalde

website — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:46:53 +0000

This article examines water management and control by the Roman army in arid environments, with a focus on southern Jordan. It presents the results of an aqueduct survey at Khirbet al-Khalde (Wadi al-Yutm, Aqaba Governorate), situated 26 km to the northeast of modern Aqaba. The aqueduct, which is the best surviving example of its kind in the Wadi al-Yutm, connected the site’s small fort (castellum) to a spring located approximately 1 km to the southeast. The aqueduct is notable because of its steep incline, and its construction is further evidence for the complex water management systems that are found in this region. The article argues that the aqueduct at Khirbet al-Khalde facilitated the control asserted by the army over water points along the Via Nova Traiana and, by extension, over trade and movement along this frontier zone.

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An Interdisciplinary Exhibition on Ancient Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass

website — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:10:50 +0000

The exhibition Dig Deeper: Discovering an Ancient Glass Workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass transported the visitor to the ruins of a production site in Roman Palestine. Among the interactive displays of its artifacts, the museumgoer learned about networks, connections, and means of production in the ancient Mediterranean world. Expertly contextualized data from the excavations at the ancient workshop, hands-on material, interactive game consoles, and experimental archaeology anchored this brilliant exhibition. Collectively, this combination made for an engaging and compelling exhibition, and one which impressively spoke to a diverse intergenerational audience. Dig Deeper focused on the excavation of a glass workshop in Jalame el-Asafna (located near Haifa, Israel) and how archaeologists, glass artists, and scientists continue to collaborate to learn more about this important site. As a museum devoted to a single material, and one with a long reputation in the study of ancient glass, this exhibition is well situated within the orbit of the Corning Museum of Glass and its mission focused on art, history, and science.

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The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World’s Oldest House Church

website — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000

In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site’s Christian Building as the ancient world’s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling’s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as a community-owned church through a single, deliberate program of modification. This article engages with legacy ideas about the Christian Building, unexplored archival records, and recent studies of Dura-Europos to rethink the building’s phases, functions, and dating. I argue that House M8A was not the domus ecclesiae that Kraeling envisioned—wholly, instantly, and permanently converted to a church—but a Christian house that retained a domestic aspect even as it was adapted for religious activity. The article proposes new phases for the building and advances an earlier chronology for its construction in the late second or early third century CE, a time that better fits revised estimates of Dura’s Roman development. This reinterpretation of the world’s oldest domestic church building bears significant repercussions for our understanding of early Christian architecture and communities and underscores the value of critical thinking and revisiting legacy ideas in archaeology.

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The Early Iron Age Cemetery of Ḥorvat Tevet: Life and Death in a Rural Community in the Jezreel Valley

website — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Recent salvage excavations at Ḥorvat Tevet in northern Israel revealed a cemetery consisting of at least 25 burials dated to the Iron I period (11th–10th centuries BCE). In this article, the burial practices employed in this cemetery are analyzed in order to shed light on the social complexity, economy, and funerary rituals of a rural community in the Jezreel Valley in the period between the collapse of Egyptian rule in Canaan and the formation of early monarchic Israel. Based on the finds in the graves and variations between graves, it is concluded that the site was home to a community characterized by minimal wealth accumulation, limited social division, and few long-distance trade contacts, though there are implications that the site had connections with the Beth-Shean Valley. This evidence is then contextualized in light of mortuary data from the Late Bronze II–Iron IIA Jezreel Valley in order to define aspects of continuity and change during the transition from Canaanite city-states to territorial polities.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains photographs of human remains.

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Enheduanna and Her World: Individual Women in Ancient Western Asia

website — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Few ancient Mesopotamian names live in the public memory, even fewer are of women. She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 B.C. at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, changed that. The exhibition, which was featured on many popular platforms and publications from the New York Times to Hyperallergic, celebrated Enheduanna, the first poet whose name we know, her individuality, agency, and the creative power of her words. At the same time, it highlighted the different roles of women reflected in Sumerian and Akkadian material and visual culture. Exhibits on ancient individuals and individual stories have the potential to change biased historical narratives. By reviewing the curatorial practices of the exhibit, this paper examines the role of She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia in challenging the traditional ancient western Asian canon.

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The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq)

website — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Suburbs and other zones of urban sprawl are not recent phenomena; they are as old as cities themselves. However, archaeological investigation of them has been relatively scarce, biasing reconstructions of the scale and diversity of early urban populations, industries, and economies, as well as reconstructions of ancient cities’ size and form. Here, we use aerial and satellite imagery in combination with ground survey to identify and characterize the extramural areas of one of the world’s earliest cities, Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar), in southern Iraq. The results suggest the need for some revisions of earlier impressionistic ideas about the extent, location, and dates of Ur’s suburbs. The distributions of ceramics of periods spanning the fifth to first millennium BCE suggest that Ur may have been founded in the fifth to fourth millennium BCE as a pair of spatially separate settlements that grew at different rates, only one of which developed into the city’s highly mounded core; that more distant suburbs formed by the third millennium BCE; and that intensity of occupation of various extramural zones covering hundreds of hectares shifted throughout the third to first millennium BCE. Overall, the data challenge characterizations of Ur as more compact and spatially continuous than other early Mesopotamian cities.

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